The church's executive helicopter had kept fairly low as it flew over the Gulf of Mexico. The main airborne gangcults kept to the Great Central Desert, where there were lots of long, hard freeways to use as landing strips, and the Confederate Air Force shouldn't be interested in tangling with the Church of Joseph, but Roger Duroc knew the South-East was full of 57 varieties of psychopathic crazy, and it only took a set of wings and some air-to-air Stinger missiles to put a severe dent in the flightplan. As it turned out, the flight was quiet. Boring, even.
Simone just sat strapped into her seat and looked out of the window at the flat, sparkling expanse of sea. She had never flown before, and had been afraid it would upset her tummy. After what she had lived through, she had obviously developed a strong stomach. She didn't complain. Duroc wondered whether the Elder would approve of his bringing the girl along. They were close to the Last Days, and Seth probably wanted the elect to purge themselves of all distractions. Duroc wasn't quite sure why he had decided to pick Simone out of her New Orleans hell, but it still felt like the thing to do.
Since the Jibbenainosay, he had been having to crunch his way through an increasingly scary dosage of narcolep pills to get any sleep. Simone helped. She was energetic, and tired him out. Their love-making was desperate, and draining, and afterwards he could usually sink into a dreamless oblivion for a few hours. It was comforting, after being so close to the Great Secret Shaping Events of the Age, to be around a girl who barely knew the name of the President of the United States. She was smart, but her life had robbed her of too much awareness.
They flew over a little battle. A coastguard PT boat, augmented by a couple of Good Ole Boy skimmers, was methodically sinking a bargeload of Mexicans. On the skimmers, fat men with cowboy hats were picking off the bobbing heads in the water with precision rifles. Duroc wondered what the wetbacks expected in the land of the free. If by some miracle they got through the immigration patrols, they'd just wind up indentured for life. From the perspective of the killing fields of Guanajuato, even a life of servitude in chains must seem like a step in the right direction. At least if you were property, you were valuable enough not to be shot for sport. Duroc wondered whether he could take the time, in the name of chaos-spreading, to lay down some napalm on the Good Ole Boys. Biron the Rouge would approve, he was sure. But it was a side issue. He had Brother Sam Quarrill, the pilot, take the spidercopter up out of range, and they headed on, towards the Keys.
It was difficult to draw a coastline on a map these days. Just as the swell of the Mississippi Delta had put New Orleans on an ineptly-walled island in the mud, so the rising sea level had sunk most of the Florida peninsula. They flew over sunken towns, thickets of swampland, and shallow lakes. East coast resort towns like Daytona and Miami had done their best to keep some tidal integrity, but the rest of the state was practically a primeval waste. There was still some kind of community at Tampa, but that was as far as it went. However, the flyover did reveal some traces of inhabitation. There were swamp-skimmers out, and Duroc noticed more than a few houses in trees or artificial islands.
There was a big GenTech experimental compound at Narcoossee, he had been warned, and it was suggested that he not tangle with them. 'Work of the Devil,' Quarrill muttered as they overflew Narcoossee. From the air, the place looked like a prisoner-of-war camp. Duroc supposed the boys in Tokyo just kept the plans from WWII in case they ever had to build a swamp hellhole again. There was quite a bit of activity around the compound as they passed. As usual in America, there were people running around with guns.
They came up to Cape Canaveral from due East. The reclamation crew were supposed to have raised a stretch of the firing grounds out of the water as a landing pad, but work had gone slowly. Quarrill inflated the amphibian runners, and touched down on the sea off Merritt Island. They waited for the boat to come for them, and Duroc wondered who he would have to single out for the blame.
The seas were scattered with dead fish.
'Are we there?' asked Simone, waking up.
Duroc nodded.
'It stinks.' She wrinkled her nose.
A human body, face-down, floated by. It bumped against the copter and slowly turned over. The fish had taken most of the flesh off its face, but Duroc could tell from the expoosed skull that the dead man hadn't been normal. The jaws were lengthened, and seemed to have more teeth than usual, and there were bony ridges around the eyes. What little skin remained was green, and rugose. Duroc stuck his leg out of the copter, and shoved the corpse with his boot toe. It sank beneath the surface, and didn't come up again.
Simone was still looking with distaste.
'There's a boat coming out from the Cape,' Quarrill said. A skimmer, its bulk raised out of the water on treads, was darting towards them. A couple of people in Josephite black hats were standing up in the prow. Evidently, they wanted to make a ceremony of greeting the Big Man from Salt Lake City.
Duroc was wearing a short-sleeved black shirt and slacks. He held out his hand, and Simone gave him what she called his preacher hat. He set it on his head, and tried to look religious. Elder Seth's people were indispensable, but Duroc wished they didn't have to go through a lot of this thee and thou crap.
The skimmer slowed, and bobbed next to the spidercopter.
'Elder Duroc,' said a square-faced young woman in Josephite strip. Duroc held out his arm, and they awkwardly shook hands across the gap. 'I'm Sister Addams. Bethany Addams.'
'Well met. Sister. This is Simone. She's my…executive assistant'
Simone wore a flowered beach coat over a coffee-cream string bikini that matched her skin-tone almost exactly. She wiggled close to the open hatch of the copter, and gave Sister Addams a look at her long legs. The Sister wasn't impressed, but swallowed her disapproval. Duroc came with the Elder Nguyen Seth seal of divine approval.
'We'll tow you in. A ceremony of thanks for your arrival has been prepared.'
'I am well pleased.'
Quarrill and the Brother driving the skimmer got together and slung a line up.
Duroc noticed another person in the skimmer. He was obviously not a Josephite. His head was buried in a mass of angled grey-and-white beard and hair. He wore open-toed rainers, ragged army pants and a denim vest covered in latches. Duroc recognized the names on the patches. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Hercules, Pegasus, Circe, Argos, Vulcan.
'This,' said Sister Addams, 'is Commander Fonvielle.'
'Of course. Good afternoon. Commander…'
Fonvielle saluted. 'Present and correct, Mr Prezz, sir.'
Duroc caught Sister Addams' look.
'And how are things in the White House?' Fonvielle asked. There was drool in his beard.
'Very well thank you.'
'And the First Lady?'
'Excellent.'
'Bully.'
Duroc felt a twinge of worry. The plan depended on Commander Fonvielle's expertise, and the astronaut was obviously a couple of planets short of a solar system.
The skimmer was roped to the copter now. Duroc strode across and got a firm footing on the deck. He helped Simone, and she pushed herself away from the copter door.
Something surfaced betwen them, pushing the spidercopter and the skimmer apart. Simone screeched, and Duroc grabbed her.
The water was frothing and foaming, and the thing—a large animal—thrashed.
A long arm, basically human but thickly scaled, latched onto the side of the skimmer. Duroc took in the hand in a glimpse. The fingers were webbed, and instead of nails, the creature had yellow barbs.
Duroc struggled with the thrashing Simone, trying to pull her out of the water, to get her out of the thing's way.
It had both hands on the skimmer now, and was hauling its bulk out of the sea. Streams of saltwater gushed from its orifices. It was wearing the remains of a
Quarrill had a boathook. He struck the thing on the back of its skull. Roaring, it turned around, opening its snout to reveal a tangle of green-furred teeth. Quarrill backed into the copter, but the thing pushed away from the skimmer and leaped for him. The pilot screamed as the barbs went into his flesh.
